3 BILLION PEOPLE AGREE

“Money has to serve, not to rule.”
Johann Wagener 10-29-13


Two leaders of approximately 3 billion people are troubled about the moral decline and obsession with money around the globe.

Strange bedfellows Pope Francis and Xi Jinping champion religion over the love of money

The Roman Catholic Church hasn’t found usually much common ground in its icy relationship with China and its Communist Party rulers, but are the two secretive institutions moving, albeit unwittingly, closer together? Recent comments by Pope Francis and officials close to Chinese president Xi Jinping that decry the abandonment of moral traditions for the unbridled pursuit of wealth sound eerily similar.

Xi “is troubled by what he sees as the country’s moral decline and obsession with money,” three sources with ties to China’s leadership told Reuters on Sunday, and he hopes the “traditional cultures” of China’s three largest faiths—Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism—”will help fill a void that has allowed corruption to flourish.”

Similarly, Pope Francis made headlines last week by lashing out at “an economic system which has at its center an idol called money,” and called for “financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone.” He concluded: “Money has to serve, not to rule.”